www.metafilter.com/mefi/44689
If they were all three from the AP or you could show me the same pers on made the comments from all three photos, fine. Finding should also say looting, that's the only problem I see.
Much like some news organizations use the word "terrorist", while some pr efer to use other less loaded phrases. If AP also had a picture of a white person and failed to use the word "lo oting", or if the other agency had shown blacks and listed "looting" the n this might be compelling, but as it stands I don't buy it.
Unless, of course, a lot of the freaked-out mentions of "looting" are rea lly just crytpic versions of "look at how those savage black people beha ve in an emergency".
Oh yeah, if Yahoo does the captions themselves, then I rescind my whole a rgument, and concur that it is pure bullshit to label them like that. But if the wire services also write the captions then my objection stands .
As long as you're not like g rabbing food off someone's table, I'd say some slack is in order for eve ryone down there. The guy getting beer could be accused of having weird priorities, but shit, after a storm like that I'd crave a cold one mysel f, maybe. When I lived in Florida, the first things I'd stock up on duri ng a hurricane warning were beer and cigarrettes.
This is two di fferent news services, so maybe there's no racism. If the AP uses different terminology for white people wading through the muck after the storm then there's something.
"Law enforcement efforts to contain the emergency left by Katrina slippe d into chaos in parts of New Orleans Tuesday with some police officers and firefighters joining looters in picking stores clean... "Some officers joined in taking whatever they could, including one New O rleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27- inch flat screen television. "Officers claimed there was nothing they could do to contain the anarchy , saying their radio communications have broken down and they had no di rection from commanders. "'We dont have enough cops to stop it,' an officer said.
Something like this on its own wouldn't cause us to become subconciously racist. Rather, it just subconciously confirms and adds to all the other little forms of racism we're faced with from birth. As Avenue Q put it, "Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes."
There's a subtle rumbling among journalism critics that calls for a set o f standards for journalists, much like the standards that airline pilots or doctors must adhere to. Standards among editors would call it looting no matter who had the bread .
below that one, billysumday: "WWL-TV was reporting that a law enforcement officer was shot in the bac k of the head Tuesday afternoon on the west bank. The officer reportedl y approached the looter near the intersection of Wall Boulevard and Gen . DeGaulle and, while talking to suspect, was shot in the back of the h ead by a second looter."
Or any grocery store anywhere in New Orleans, for that matter. I just assumed "looting" but I can't see that word just ified for any taking of food from a most likely destroyed store during s uch a disaster.
Without knowing what the photographer saw, and pres umably reported / attached to the photo as he sent it back to HQ (yeah, I have no idea how this works), could these captions not, theoretically, be accurate? I mean, could the photographer not have witnessed some peo ple breaking into a store and looting vs others coming across stuff just floating around?
How, exactly, is this a "dramatic failure of journalism"? There is NO RACISM here, just two different people writing about two different s tories. Do you want all the journalists in one room, writing the same th ing?
Actually, the pictures captioned "looting" by AP are pictures 388 and 352 of the "Hurricanes and Tropical Storms" section of Yahoo, while the pic ture captioned "finding" by AFP/Getty is an unnumbered (within the page) photo from the "Yahoo News" section of Yahoo. Or, even more accurately, links to the photos were arranged side-by-side by bairey, and, by clicking on those links, tabs containing the pages co ntaining the photos were arranged side-by-side by myself. But, more seriously: yeah, it pissed me off until I realized that they we re captioned by different companies. Now I'm just annoyed at the low lev el that happens when newscasters mispronounce words and the like. Both A P and AFP/Getty should probably use the word "take", instead of either " find" or "loot". That said, if AP uses the word "find" for a white person taking stuff, or AFP/Getty uses the word "loot" for a black person getting stuff, then t oday's gonna find me all full of indignation, but until then this seems a near-miss to me.
This caption is just a brilliantly non-judgemental: As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps thro ugh a broken window, while leaving a convenience store on the I-10 serv ice road south, in Metairie, La.
I'm seeing so much moral condemnation of "looting" that as far as I'm con cerned, the press had damn well better be calling anyand I mean anytheft in New Orleans "looting". Dial zipping just now, I see eff-tarded Faux going on and on about that. But what really angered me was that both NBC and CB S (I think) spent minutes of their 30-minute evening news showing the lo oting (aka black people finding stuff). But OTOH part of the reason the networks were showing it is just because that's what they happened to have pics of. Some of these n etworks don't seem to be getting out to the real stories very well.
Off topic, but does anyone know why television sets stolen during looting are so often called "color tv's"? I can't think of any other situation aside from that Dire Straits song where the word "color" is still used t o decribe TV's. Is the implication that the looters are replacing their black and white T V's?
Anyway, I don't really think taking food from an abandoned grocery store after an (locally) apocalyptic disaster while waiting to be rescued real ly counts as 'looting'. It's not like oportunistic people driving into an abandoned town and brea king into homes and bussness and then driving out. We're talking about p eople stuck there, who could very well starve to death while waiting for rescue.
Shooting looters on sight is an old gulf coast hurricane tradition. as for why the polic e are actually helping loot ,I have been led to believe that New Orleans has one of the most corrupt police departments in the country. I'm not surprised to hear that they are "helping themselves" I wonder if, when the Louisiana National Guard gets back from Iraq in 4-6 weeks, they can retroactively help with this nightmare.
posted by delmoi Actually, as soon as they disobeyed the legal order to evacuate they were criminals and have no conceivable right to steal from the business owne rs who obeyed the evacuation order and left the area.
bairy, great post, and I agree with this comment to an extent; it's not n early as bad as if both captions came from the same agency, but it still says something about the press. It's interesting to see the word choice s of the other captions posted in this thread. I especially enjoyed: As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps thro ugh a broken window, while leaving a convenience store on the I-10 serv ice road south, in Metairie, La.
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